Salzburg, Austria to honor UW women’s studies scholar

Gerda Lerner, Robinson-Edwards Professor of History emerita UW–Madison, will receive a new prize from the city of Salzburg, Austria.

The Grand Prize for Scholarship and Research will be awarded for the first time at a ceremony on Thursday, July 24, at Salzburg’s Castle Hellbrunn. Lerner, a native of Austria, also has received the Austrian State Prize for Women’s History and History of the Labor Movement. The Austrian government also bestowed Lerner with its highest award, the Cross of Honor for Arts and Sciences, in 1996. She holds 16 honorary degrees, including one from the University of Vienna.

Lerner fled the Hitler regime in 1939. In 1980 she founded UW–Madison’s Graduate Program in Women’s History; she directed it until her retirement in 1991. Her latest book is “Fireweed: A Political Autobiography” (Temple University Press: 2002).